[Isan]

I strongly disagree against this also. While the manga belongs to the mangaka, the fan translation used in the scanlation belongs to the person that did it and as such they should have a say about what happens to their work. Let's be reminded that scanlations as a whole are illegal (even if it's not licensed in the US, which is not the center of the world btw) and it's only natural that some groups would rather have some means of control over how it's spread to minimize the damage. While most would argue that scanlations benefits the mangaka, that's absolutely not the way it's viewed in japan. It's like saying downloading a pirated movie off the internet benefits the film industry because it makes a lot more ppl see said movie. And while it hasn't happened yet, I can still see the day where japanese companies start sending C&D to scanlation teams. Mangaka and japanese publishers do lose money because of scanlations and those loss by far outweight the gain they get from ppl buying manga in japanese because they liked the scanlations. Let's be realistic, that's a minimal percentage compared to the thousands of ppl who enjoy their free scanlations and wont ever buy anything in their original format. And while I'm at it I'll also point out that buying the licensed version only encourages the US companies and what little money the mangaka do get from foreign deals is laughable. All those manga with mangaka artists in crappy 1K apart eating ramen all week really isn't a joke. Most artists are not well paid, far from it. If you really want to encourage the mangaka personally, buy their manga in japanese.

Sorry for straying from the main point heh